Word processors used on modern day computers have greatly enhanced the efficiency of a document creation. However, today's word processors do not adequately handle position-sensitive data. There are many types of such data, one example being citations in legal briefs which have particularly unique syntactical requirements.
When a court case is properly cited for the first time in a document, the full citation, including the book/page number containing the cited information, is included. If the citation is to be properly referenced again, in accordance with well-accepted rules of legal drafting, the reference would not be the full citation, but rather an abbreviated version. If the second citation is made without any other intervening citations in the document, "Id." is used in lieu of the book/page number. If, on the other hand, the second citation is made after intervening citations in the document, "Supra" is used in lieu of the book/page number.
Modern word processors have the ability to cut and paste data, from one document to another. This provides a person writing an article, paper, etc. a considerable productivity enhancement when they later write similar papers, or want to borrow information from one document when creating another document. However, the well-known cut and paste function is relative "non-intelligent" in that the data to be cut and pasted is merely copied directly, without any consideration being given to any position-sensitive data which may be contained in such cut/paste data. In addition, when a person is editing a document, and decides to cut and paste within the same document, there is no consideration given as to any position-sensitive data.
Accordingly, it is an object of the invention to improve the word processing of document having repeated multiple variants or formatives of data.
It is another object of the invention to provide improved cut and paste operations within word processing systems.
It is still a further object of the invention to facilitate automated formatting of data in word processing systems.
It is yet a further object of the invention to provide a system for automatically detecting and accounting for the editing and updating of position-sensitive data.
These and other objects are achieved by the invention, which may be more fully understood with reference to the accompanying drawings wherein: